Let's say I'm going to run around the city and start randomly machine-gunning down kids whose parents don't wear a shirt that says "Zorin is awesome". I'd give plenty of warning to people to MAKE SURE THEY WEAR this shirt, then I'd carry out my threat.

How does warning people I'm going to murder their for not doing something pointless and trivial make me any less of a murderer when I go around shooting kids in the streets for something ridiculous that their parents didn't do?

This is basically the equivalent of what happened in biblical Egypt. It does not excuse the god in the bible from being a vengeful, murderous entity.

This comment is a perfect example of what this study is trying to show. You are a human, and are required to adhere to the "don't kill people" rule.

The deity of a religion can do all sorts of stuff that may not make sense to you, and you don't analyze it if you have faith.

If you have faith that the message is real, you will follow the instructions and save yourself. If you think to yourself, what silly people these are thinking blood above the door will protect them from an imaginary angel? You used analytic thinking rather than faith.

Set aside your brain, believe in a deity for a minute, and accept that anything the deity does is for the best. I bet you will come to a different conclusion. Put your brain back in, and you will change your mind again. That's what the article is all about.

It would be similar to a hurricane bearing down on your and your house. You know 2 days in advance that it will be a level 5 hurricane. You can take precautions or not. It isn't the hurricane's fault.

If you believe in that God, he just does his things. He can't be blamed. He is "Mother Nature".

Your comparison fails though, because you're describing an indifferent god, which is emphatically not what the prevalent religions tell us. The religious representation of God is someone omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent, attributes nobody attaches to a hurricane. You'd expect such a God to make a moral and loving choice. You wouldn't ask that of a hurricane.

Mutatis mutandis, it's like excusing some guy that beats his wife by saying "hey, she knew he'll beat her up if she talked to her mother, it's like sticking your hand in a candle flame. She could take precautions or not. It isn't the candle's fault." Doesn't work.

For me, analytical thinking has actually increased my belief in Christianity (separate from 'religion'). If you would like to check out a book that promotes analytical thinking about what Christianity claims, check out Mere Christianity which is a compliation of various radio broadcasts given during WWII by C.S. Lewis (former athiest).

I read that junk while I was a teenager in the process of figuring out that religion was bunk, and it completely failed to convince me. Lewis provides at best a surface veneer of analytical thinking. The problem is, like all religious apologists I've ever read, he depends heavily on circular arguments and other fallacies. He's good at disguising them well enough to get past the mental filters of people like you who are reading to confirm their faith rather than critique it. However, to someone who is reading with a critical eye, Lewis is transparently awful.

Consider, for example, one of Lewis' most famous contributions to Christian apologia: "Lord, Liar, or Lunatic". He claims that Jesus could only have been one of these three things, then tries to prove that Jesus was neither a liar nor a lunatic, and therefore he must have been God. This argument fails so many ways it's not even funny:

1. False trilemma. There are other possibilities which Lewis never acknowledged, perhaps because they're too challenging to his faith. For example, as we have next to no corroboration of Jesus' existence outside of the Bible (there's only one mention of him in any historical text, and that one is widely suspected to be a faith-confirming interpolation added to Josephus by a monk during the Middle Ages), one very important possibility is that Jesus didn't exist at all and is wholly mythological. Another is that he existed, was an ordinary human who tried to be a religious reformer, and the tales attributed to him by his followers grew in the telling until he was a deity. (Note that the earliest copies of Biblical texts we have date to several decades after Jesus' death, plenty of time for mythmaking.)

2. Jesus could not have been a liar -- uh, sorry, he could have been. I don't remember exactly what Lewis' arguments here were, but I do remember that they were transparently awful, relying mostly on the reflexive reverence which Christians have for Jesus.

3. Jesus could not have been a lunatic -- same kind of problem as #2. Many of the acts attributed to him in the Bible actually paint a rather good image of a religious lunatic, if you don't think he's God.

If you deeply analyse you'll soon come to the point that the evidence for science is exactly the same as evidence for God : some book's claims. Science's claims are grand and utterly unverifiable by anyone who doesn't have millions to throw at it, once you go beyond Newton's claims

What a lot of ignorant claptrap. First, the important thing is that those claims are verifiable in a finite way with finite resources. Checking some scientific claim may cost a bit, but in most cases it can be done (and I don't understand where you got this notion about truth needing to be cheap). It's a qualitative difference from religion whose claim are essentially unverifiable, no matter how many resources you may pump into churches or TV preachers. Second, lots of science beyond Newton can be easily tested by yourself, at home, without spending much. Just off the top of my head, the basics of electromagnetism up to Maxwell's equations don't need more than a battery or two, a few magnets and some wire; you can even experience some quantum physics, or some advanced optics (holography), if you buy a small laser pointer or a couple of phototransistors.

The rest of your post is just as bad; it's true that science isn't omniscient, and that the more complex the domain the fuzzier the answers will get, but this is only to be expected, and in no way invalidates the scientific method. And the way you dismiss medicine, is just dishonest. You can't expect the crispness of physics in medicine, because the domain it works in is simply much more complex, but you're blithely ignoring the huge advances and successes imedicine had in the last few hundred years, successes which were based on huge numbers of observations and experiments, creation and testing of hypotesis, and so on. Do you think Pasteur or Salk read about their vaccines in books and took them by faith? Think again.

First, the important thing is that those claims are verifiable in a finite way with finite resources.

The claims of science that are verifiable are of this sort "if you do this, this happens, and if you do that, that happens as a result." Those are the things you can verify. What you cannot verify is the physicalist metaphysics that are tacitcly accepted as true by most scientists. Also what you cannot verify is that the cause effect relationship is eternal, or otherwise underpinned by an eternal rule or law. So while you can verify that if you do this, this happens today and perhaps reasonably next year, can you verify that it's what eternally happens? No, of course not. Science may well be a study of local phenomena rather than universal phenomena. And by local I mean restricted by time and not only by space.

Science is very useful in its domain. It has a pragmatic purpose. The problem with science is when its claims are stretched beyond this domain. So, universalism is not something science can claim. It's an assumption that scientists often make, sure. Science studies here and now, but it can't study what happens trillions of light years away from here or whatever is beyond the light cone (except from our viewpoint, which may not be a valid viewpoint for such study), and nor can it study the conditions that will be present in this space 100 trillion years in the future. So science doesn't give the kind of eternalistic answers that religions attempt to give. And science often tries to sneak its physicalist metaphysics through the back door, without analysis.

I am very much down on organized religion. So by no means would I defend religion overall. Most religion is crazy but for reasons that have very little to do with science. Religion is simply incoherent. It has no internal consistency and it has all kinds of purely logical and moral flaws that have nothing to do with science. But science is also flawed. Science often presents itself as the only valid way of knowing something, and that's simply not true.

It does not excuse the god in the bible from being a vengeful, murderous entity.

You can't get into Yog-Sothoth's head or judge It, little insect. To understand this "better" (not that puny humans are really able to understand this, or anything, at all), imagine you're not an insignificant insect, but instead you're the ageless inscrutable giant with a brain the size of a planet, and you're casually observing a few trillion of your numbered specimens. A "thought" (sorry, I'm anthropomorphizing) strikes you: let's cull some of the specimens that have property X. With a near-effortless wave of a tent-- um, I mean, a hand -- the specimens are removed from the informal experiment.

This is not vengeful. "Vengeful" implies some amount of passion, probably even some actual empathy with your victim as you wish to feel yourself gain something as you feel them experience their loss. You may have a brain the size of a planet, but you can't really see from the specimens' point of view, any more than a cow knows what it's like for a bacterium to die. Indeed, you pretty much know that your specimens don't feel any pain or emotions at all, since their intelligence and capability to perceive anything is so absurdly limited.

It is not murder. "Murder" implies that someone's right to exist was violated. These specimens are not "someone"s; they are just material. The idea that a spec of sand or a spec of protoplasm or a puny human has "rights" in any way even remotely comparable (by many orders of magnitude) to the expectations in the eternal existence of the Great Old Ones, is not merely a joke, but an insult to the Great Old Ones. How dare you demean the gods' Rights by asserting that such insignificant specs as humans also have rights? I can't think of any way to be more irreverent to the very idea of rights.

That anyone would call one of the old ones "evil" for altering the state of a few thousand virtually inanimate carbon life forms, is ridiculous. Use the word "evil" where it really applies, such as.. hey, I can't event describe the scope of an evil act in this limited medium, but it involves breaking agreements on certain universal constants (establish billions of big bangs ago)that are relied upon various hyperdimensional constructions. Oh dear, now I am being irreverent by criminally understating things. Look, its just an analogy, ok?

My question is this - which one, the murderer that converts or the buddhist that does not acknowledge Christ as his Lord and Savior, ends up in heaven?

As you no doubt are aware, Christian doctrine states that the murder goes to heaven and the Buddhist goes to hell. Theologians explain this twisted outcome with an even more twisted presupposition [wikipedia.org]: that both men "deserved" to be tortured for eternity the moment they were created. The Christian god does not look at the good and bad each person has done to "weigh souls", and he is under no obligation to provide his creation an "out" from this predicament... in fact (and here's where it gets really weird), mainstream theology says that it would go against Yahweh's very nature to simply forgive you for having the audacity to be born. So there's this complicated workaround by which he tortures his son/an incarnation of himself and does some internal bookkeeping that then allows him to forgive you.

So to recap, you owe a debt (that cannot be verified) for your bad behavior (that cannot have been avoided) to an all powerful entity (that cannot be seen). Repayment in kind (e.g. living a good life) won't work; it must be in the form of allegiance (to a particular religion, similar in character to thousands of others) for which you will be spared eternal torment and granted eternal bliss (that also cannot be verified) upon your death (at which point you cannot report your experiences to others). That's the "good news" of the Christian message.

Us analytic types might focus on the particular logic where the "repayment" coincides with joining and supporting a human institution, instead of directly addressing the "badness" that led to the "debt". It's almost as if this is exactly what a twisted cultist would come up with to exert control over a group instead of what one would expect an all-loving, all-wise being to do. How very convenient this philosophy is... and how convincing it is to the child that hears it from everyone he loves and respects in the community. Nothing sales heavenly fire insurance like a little bit of fear.

But God hardens the Pharaoh's heart in Exodus 9:12, assuring that he won't free the Jews. So, you can't fully blame the Pharaoh when God was fixing the game so the drama would play out the way he wanted it. To not blame God would be like not blaming a terrorist because people should have had gas masks when the poison gas was released. If you told this story, and replaced God with... the Punisher, well, as much of a "dark anti-hero" the Punisher is, he doesn't vengefully murder a nation of first born children, because that would clearly make him a villain. Nobody would seriously be an apologist for his actions.

because, there is as much evidence of zeus being god than your view of what god is.

that's the thing that always made me wonder about religious believers: once you step outside your little belief circle and see others that have dramatically different ways - and they are VERY SURE that they are right, too; this should be the 'aha!' moment that puts doubt in your mind that your story is any more real than theirs.

you don't believe in their gods. or theirs. or theirs. and they don't believe in yours. isn't this a wake-up call to you, in any way, shape or form?

or, can you just brush off this bit of logic and still stick to your dogma, insisting fables can still be 'real' ?

You're wrong. People that believe in those false gods are obviously inferior and God will smite them with all his fury if they don't convert. We the Catholics have been helping the Lord with the smiting for two millennia, with great success!

And we do that because the Lord told us to love everybody and we want everybody to go to heaven.

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." -Stephen Roberts

But they were true diagnosed serious medical problems that went away immediately with prayer and haven't returned after many years.

Oh sorry I missed this bit. That's not evidence. That's coincidence. Atheists experience spontaneous remission of serious medical problems at a rate that is statistically indistinguishable from that of religious individuals.

All your post shows is that you're one of those who isn't thinking critically.

Actually, I think that we see far fewer miracles or healing today than seem to have been prevalent in Christ and the Apostles time because God doesn't want to share any glory with the medical community. We don't stand on faith to be healed anymore. We pray, and if that doesn't work trot off to the doctors. We may continue to be prayed for, but why should God act when we're not trusting in him but trusting in the doctors? God does what He chooses to do to advance His causes. Once and a while they line up with what we want. Usually we want Him to act in ways that benefit us and don't do His cause any good at all - or at least that's been my experience with people.

This isn't a smash against the medical profession either. My wife is in the medical field. Doctors have a lot of knowledge about the body and I'm not against making use of their services to fix problems at all. That isn't the intent of the post. It is simply an acknowledgement that we try to cover all bases today rather than waiting for God to heal and give Him all the glory for what He has done for us. Why should we expect Him to act under those circumstances? In the case I have observed, although medical doctors had been consulted and the individual was referred to a specialist, no actual treatment had yet been done. The healing was done before going to the specialist.

My observations in no way are meant to convince anybody else, and my recounting them again wouldn't do any good either to answer another previous post. I'm simply stating that they are sufficient for me. If there was just one data point, your claim would be more valid. But I have many in my life. It is sufficient for me. The test procedure was written up in the Bible a couple thousand years ago, and it still is observable today. I choose to accept that.

If it is not sufficient for you, my earlier comment does still apply though. Go spend time with Pentecostal Christians that are living up to the NT churches principles for evidence for yourself. If you don't want to be around any place where you might see some direct evidence yourself, then you can't criticize me or other Christians for believing what we do actually observe. You are a like a scientist who doesn't like a particular theory but who won't do the experiment himself because he doesn't want to have his world view messed up, in much the same way that Christians are accused of rejecting science because it might change their spiritual view.

Because making decisions based on things that are true will work out better than making decisions based on things that are not true.

Since Faith can't be proven, inherent to its very nature, then all faiths must be equal

Exactly, they're all equally irrelevant.

It's not about right or wrong, but simply a choice about what feels the best for you.

Except that religious folk seem to have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. If you choose to fantasize about a deity, and that makes you happy, that's fine. When your fantasy starts affecting those around you, that's not OK at all.

Preeeetty sure that if you take one step back (as far back is needed to see Luke 19:11-27) you'll see a parable was being told, and Jesus was quoting a king.
Not taking sides, just.. not a fan of quote mining. No offense.

And that pure blood line back to Adam, well sure. But recall, that Cain went to Nod and found a wife there. And mitochondrial DNA is much easier to trace back. Because while we might get half our DNA from dad, we get the energy machinery from mom.

And that brings up another point in Genesis. If it was just Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel, then how did Cain migrate to Nod? Were the 'other' people in Nod not part of God's little social experiment?

But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars —they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.

Actually the article seemed rational and logical to me, and I'm a Christian. This paragraph especially:

The findings, Gervais says, are based on a longstanding human psychology model of two distinct, but related cognitive systems to process information: an âoeintuitiveâ system that relies on mental shortcuts to yield fast and efficient responses, and a more âoeanalyticâ system that yields more deliberate, reasoned responses.

âoeOur study builds on previous research that links religious beliefs to âintuitiveâ(TM) thinking,â says study co-author and Associate Prof. Ara Norenzayan, UBC Dept. of Psychology. âoeOur findings suggest that activating the âanalyticâ(TM) cognitive system in the brain can undermine the âintuitiveâ(TM) support for religious belief, at least temporarily.â

Anaylitic thinking isn't needed to tell your mother from your sister. They should study to see if athiests are lacking an intuitive thinking. As it notes, both kinds of thinking are useful.

I'm not going to bother cleaning up the UTF errors, I wish/. coders would fix that.

The researcher quoted is not saying that atheists will have more analysis than intuition. It is hinting at a possible link between religiousness and intuition, suggesting that intuition is more dominant in religious believers.

That is completely different from intuition being missing from non-believers. Since the measurements have not been done (or at least not known to this person who was quoted), it could be possible to have far greater analytic than intuitive capacity, but suspend it long enough to maintain belief. And just as possible to have greater intuition, but fall back to analysis when given time to think about it.

I won't belabor the point with extensive citations, but you can search for yourself how religion can enter the person into a meditative state. That is, if you decide to believe (or do so out of custom), you actually turn off your brain for a little while. The analytic portions don't have the opportunity to discard information, or detect contradictions. This allows for the sort of cognitive dissonance we see from time to time. When your religion sparks up, analysis may be shutting down.

Also, you are an anecdote, you could be the statistical outlier. You could be the only intuitive atheist out there, and as soon as you say you know plenty others I can claim you may know every intuitive atheist that exists. Until this guy does more science it's all just typing.

Unfortunately now that they know this, they'll push ignorance even further. Remember, for a very long time even in the West there were theoretical criminal penalties for Atheism and apostasy, and while in most Western nations those outright criminal penalties are now gone, there's still a vast social stigma for those who actually declare themselves to not share in the beliefs.

It's weird. Religious services attendance, arguably a core tenant of every Abrahamic religion, is way down in the United States, while lots of people still call themselves religious. Religion, especially among Christian religions seems to have become a team sport, where people who have no actual connection- they don't go to church, they don't tithe, they don't follow the rituals at home, they don't even read the materials- still support a religion and claim to be part of it. They will sometimes outright fight tooth and nail against someone who also does all of these things and has only one difference, that they've actually stated that they actively believe against the religious concepts, while both have identical participation.

I would like to see a marketing push- actively tell people via TV and radio that if they don't go to church/temple/mosque that they're apostate athiests too. Call it a put-up-or-shut-up position. Maybe it'll piss off enough people that they'll either get involved with their religion enough to actually learn the rules and follow them, or they'll finally say, screw it and acknowledge the pipe dream. Probably won't work that way, but one can always hope.

There's a different between trust and faith. I trust scientists because I can go over their data and validate their conclusions. I could even (theoretically) perform the same experiments to see if I get the same data. Believing the Bible or my priest or my religious grandma requires blind faith, because there is no data to analyse, and there are no experiments to repeat.

Eh? That makes about as much sense as saying the view from my office is the opposite of a banana.

Belief is the acceptance of something as true (sometimes even though there is no evidence for it). In general, I'd say that a lot of thinking underlies a belief since it has to make sense to those holding it. Of course, to some people, anything that some guy in a big hat (or some ancient book) says seems to make sense without further evaluation, but those are the exception rather than the rule.

The opposite of thinking is what the guys who modded you insightful were doing.

Unfortunately that is not correct. Analytic thinking is geared towards determining whether something is true or not, and belief is simply "holding a premise to be true" (thanks wikipedia for the concise definitions!). That is, belief flows from critical thinking.

Lets examine this real fast: You (I am assuming) do not believe that religions have any merit. Presumably, you have some reasons or rationale for why you arrived at that conclusion. That is, you have a belief, because you had at some point (I hope) done some critical thinking, and your chain of reasoning resulted in a belief.

Likewise, I have religious views. I have belief in certain things. I, too, have reasons for my faith, and have several reasons for why I hold them to be true.

I suppose you may disagree with the definition of belief, but I think that that is a good one and if you disagree it would be easiest if you simply clarified your definitions.

My non-scientific guess is that analytic thinking can decrease belief in anything you haven't analyzed. This doesn't just apply to religion. The same goes for politics, football teams, favorite programming languages, global warming, etc.

As for religion, I'd bet the majority/vast majority really just believe whatever makes their parents or spouse or whoever happy, or whatever makes life easier. No wonder they drop it whenever they discover something that mildly contradicts their barely conceived ideas.

I personally consider the possibility of God in light of discoveries related to quantum physics, relativity, evolution, math and statistics... I don't consider these to contradict the existence of God (since they strictly do not), but to explain how little we still know and to understand the tools God could use to work with.

I personally consider the possibility of God in light of discoveries related to quantum physics, relativity, evolution, math and statistics... I don't consider these to contradict the existence of God (since they strictly do not), but to explain how little we still know and to understand the tools God could use to work with.

But, God is omnipotent right? He doesn't need tools.

See how just a little thought about physics causes you to reject one of the most fundamental claims about God, his omnipotence.

Let's be clear, it's not just "thinking" that started religion, it's uninformed, ignorant thinking that started religion in the first place, and willfully arrogant, uninformed, ignorant thinking that kept it going for so long.

Logical and analytical thinking is putting an end to religion, and it's about bloody (literally) time.

And no, it is not a gift to be simple, it's just being simple. If you want to be the town idiot, you go right ahead, but anybody trying to learn from the town idiot is just trying to be another town idiot.

The world's first substitute for science you mean. Why does it rain? The rain god. Why does the sun rise? The sun god. What decides battles? The war god. What decides love? The love goddess. Saying "it's God" instead of "we don't know" is not science.

Of course, if you really think about it, here's some fun logic:1. An article says that if people analyze written articles and books, they won't believe them.2. Ergo, If I analyze the this article, I won't believe it.3. If I believe the article, I didn't analyze it. (contrapositive)4. But if I didn't analyze it, it might not be complete BS, so I shouldn't believe the article.5. Conclusion: Don't believe anything you read, including this analysis.

Sure, it's on the table, but beleiving in it is insane. Why pretend you know what causes everything to exist when the reality is we just don't know? I'm an atheist because there is no reason to believe in any religion. When we don't know something, we don't make up an answer and believe in it whole-heartedly. We admit we don't know and try and figure it out.

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly."

Both men were victims of the time and rearing they received. Were they to be brought up in today's world, my best guess is that they'd be like Neal DeGrasse Tyson and/or Richard Dawkins in their belief systems.

Einstein's beliefs deinfitely don't fit that binary yes/no, but if you had to pick one it's closer to no.
Here's a quote:

I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.

You certainly see this with muslims; they've gone backwards culturally and economically. Quite possibly, the great Islamic revival is a symptom of economic and social collapse, and people fall back on superstition, religion and crazy and paranoid conspiracy theories.

Having dealt with many of these people, they are incredibly paranoid, superstitious people utterly prone to ridiculous conspiracy theories (especially if it involves Jews). They're so credulous, they'll believe anything -- like the lie that Jews were told to evacuate the Twin Towers before 9/11.

This hints at the key problem, which is (or ought to be) as much a quandary for religion itself as for scientific studies of it. Almost all of the questions in Gervais and Norenzayan's study related to religion as a literalist folk tradition — an aspect of lifestyle. This is how it manifests in most cultures, but that barely touches on religion as articulated by its leading intellectuals: for Christianity, say, philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas, David Hume, Immanuel Kant and George Berkeley. The idea that the beliefs of those individuals would have vanished had they been more analytical is, if nothing else, amusing. Gervais and Norenzayan’s findings should help to combat religion as an indolent obstacle to better explanations of the natural world. But it can’t really engage with the rich tradition of religious thought.

Except it isn't. I would say from my own experience that good theologians do a mixture of analytical and creative thinking. (I know this is against the/. mindset, but that needs the occasional challenge.)

If we take the original meaning of religion, which was from a Latin root that means "binding" and could be taken as "things that bind society together"* then theologians and sociologists have actually been quite good at asking some very hard questions about this, challenging religious and non-religious hierarchies.

If we take notions of "God", again theologians have been pretty good at analysing out what is mere superstition, animism and so on, from the largely unanswerable question about why or how anything at all exists. Theologians like Hans Kung and Don Cupitt, along with any number of Episcopalians, Unitarians, Quakers, Reform Jews and other progressive groups, have tried to deal constructively with the apparent human need to believe in something and share cultural practices. This hasn't always been totally successful, but a quick fact check on whether you'd prefer to live in an area where the main religion is one of the groups I've mentioned versus one where it was, say, strongly pro-Pope Catholics, Islamists or the Bible Belt might provide a clue as to whether they're on the right track or not. The simple facts of Apple-worship, programming wars, and pseudo-religions like Libertarianism, Marxism and "Free market economics" show that atheists can show quite strong religious tendencies.

So the real question is what this study means by "decrease religious belief". After all, when Phlogiston was discredited, you could argue that this resulted in a decrease in belief in the reliability of chemists. Do they really mean "decrease acceptance of bullshit?" I'd go with that.

This should be of no surprise to the followers of dharmic religions, when the buddhi (intellect) is active the paramatman (God within) is inactive. This is nicely illustrated by the iconography of Kali on the body of Shiva [wikipedia.org]. Here Kali (representing Language and intellect) awakes and Shiva (the God-sense) sleeps.

Although I'd agree with you, I think it's necessary to point out that these aren't the normative beliefs of Christianity. As those assertions go, they're over-represented among Christians in the U.S., so it skews our sample set; but that doesn't mean that it's the definitive rebuttal of Christian belief.

You might as well say that we should throw out the junk science from Harry Potter. Neither collection of stories represents a science textbook, the only difference is that large numbers of people think that the bible is an accurate record of the history of the world, whereas nobody above the age of five thinks that Harry Potter is real.

The irony of that statement is that parts of the Bible were probably the Harry Potter of their day. Self contained stories passed down, meant perhaps to educate but also entertain and certainly not literal truth. However it only takes a few idiots to believe them, stick them in a book and start a cult, the cult becomes a religion and the rest follows...

I'm a Christian, so if you need to instantly discount anything I have to say because of that, please go to the next article.

The biggest problem I have with arguments about belief is the conflation in English of "truth" and "fact". Often times when someone says "truth" they're really meaning to say "fact", as in "actual, provable occurrence". Facts can be measured, scaled, repeated, seen, felt, sensed, etc. Truth and falsity are terms related to the judgements we apply to both facts and non-facts. It is a fact that repeated blows to the head will cause an individual to die. Truth is that beating someone to death is bad. A story can be told that contains no facts, in other words, complete fiction, but the content of the story can contain truths. Fact-fiction and true-false are orthogonal axes because they describe different aspects of our experiences. We tend to want to align "fact" with "true" and "fiction" with "false", but that's a simple way of looking at it. More thought, whether strictly analytical or otherwise, and more experience can reveal the truth as more nuanced.

DYSWIDT?

Anyway, if you bothered to read this after the first sentence, flame away. If you just skipped to this sentence without reading the middle, you just want to argue at a kindergarten level, you doody-head.

No one with any working braincells believes the world was created in 6 days , woman was created from a spare rib etc etc.

Religious people have a very flexible way of redefining terms that allows anything to be true.

You see 'the world was created in 6 days' as a false statement.

They see 'the world was created in 6 days' and redefine 'day' to mean any amount of time. They add a god who creates a historical record going back to the big bang for no particular reason and such a statement is true to them. They can justify anything.

If you're right, perhaps you could persuade the people who disagree with you by talking to them and using reason. But if you start the discussion by insulting them or the number of brain cells they have, do you really expect to get anywhere?

The love of a mother is at least potentially falsifiable. Everything we know about the mind indicates that it is entirely comprised of patterns of neural activity in the brain. With sophisticated enough technology, it's entirely possible in principle to observe those patterns and determine whether love is being experienced.

Or you could argue that emotions have no physical basis and that my mother could be a philosophical zombie [wikipedia.org]. This is entirely possible, but since it's empirically indistinguishable from "actual" love the distinction is meaningless. I don't actually care wihch is true, and I'm not even sure it's cromulent to assign a truth value to either.

Well, if it works as suggested then it will cause those who believe in global warming purely because someone told them it was happening to go and look at the evidence and decide for themselves, in which case they'll keep their opinion intact but will have come to it by a more scientific approach. Win-win.

Having considered the matter carefully, I've come to the conclusion that a person who has dedicated a large portion of their lives to the study of climate effects knows more about the subject than I do. In fact, on further reflection, I may have to admit that I am no longer an expert on everything in the way that I was during my teenage years.

But God and Religion are two different things. God could be interpreted many different ways, religion is a specific belief in ideas, most of which are obsolete non-sense, based on our understanding today.

Gary: [to Stan] Look, maybe us Mormons do believe in crazy stories that make absolutely no sense, and maybe Joseph Smith did make it all up, but I have a great life. and a great family, and I have the Book of Mormon to thank for that.

Because a lot of engineers don't have an analytical mind, they have an engineering degree. I used to work with a lot of very religious engineers as well, and I found out more often than not they were good at math, not solving actual problems.

This is horse shit. I've worked with plenty of religious folks that are great at solving problems. Your line of thinking simply promotes the kind of discrimination and simple minded thinking that makes religious zealots so frustrating in the first place.

Easy. Accept that the accounts in religious texts were written by people and subject to their scope of knowledge. If there was a group of people 6000 years ago who had only covered an area of a few hundred square miles in their lives, and that few hundred square miles flooded, they would write that the world flooded. Believing that the entire Earth did not flood in no way invalidates the text.

BINGO!!!! Sadly they cannot get passed their childhood brainwashing which is very effective. Even smart people can be lazy and not want to challenge deeply held views that make them uncomfortable. For them it is just easier to and comforting to insert a supernatural being into the blank space for "the big questions" of life. I know it has taken me quite a while to reconcile some of those thoughts in my own head and I never really ever believed in a god. But I never really considered what it might mean when I die, what came before the Big Bang, etc Obviously I don't have answers to those questions, but it is only recently that I truly contemplated the implications of those questions and accepted that I'm OK with "We Don't Know" and felt no desire to insert a supernatural force into the gaping blank space.

It's quite possible for atheists to hate the religion, even if they don't hate the God. The religion is very much a real thing, with an army of believers to give it power. I used to be indifferent to religion myself, until I read of how Christians were opposing vaccination against HPV* on the grounds that it could encourage people to sin. The more I learned, the more the hate grew. But hate is not a bad thing, it can be a powerful force for reform and a drive to fight that which should be fought.
*Still in the early trial stage back then

71 And then the Romans laid hands on Jesus to lead him away. 72 But Peter said unto them, "This is not the Jew you are looking for." 73 And then the centurion said unto them, "This is not the Jew we are looking for."

If you're against Christian teaching and you think you're an analytic thinker, I challenge you find out what's wrong about the content of the bible and find an convincing argument why people who believe in Christ are doing it in vein. If you want to show that the bible is made up, or its text is corrupt, I'm going to put you through scientific method process and axiomatic logic reasoning to establish your case.

Maybe you'll show us what you expect by working through examples with some of the religions that *you* reject.

The Old Testament is based largely on oral history, like the Iliad and the Odyssey. And like them, it is flawed with omissions, distortions, and additions to make a better story. There is archaeological evidence that provides support for parts of each. The I&O covers only a couple of decades, and claims only to be a history of the Trojan War, its causes and aftermath. The Old Testament claims to be the history of the universe and the ultimate explanation of everything, complete with a dictatorial moral code.

The New Testament, with its internal contradictions, is evidence of the fabrication of Christianity and the campaign to establish it as a widely accepted system.

I'm an atheist, and am actually a big fan of word of Jesus. The ideas were revolutionary for morality and ethics in the ancient world. Whether or not Jesus was diving, or even really existed, is unimportant in this respect.

But, having said that, I'm afraid you can find all sorts of examples in the Bible that contradict each other, especially between the Old and New Testaments (e.g. stoning gays vs. loving one another). Not to mention the conflicting geneologies of Jesus in the gospels. (And I'm sure other posters will chime in soon with more examples.) Furthermore, biblical scholars worth their salt do not believe in the literal truth of the text, since it has been translated, edited, and redacted many times over. Much has been lost, forgotten, rejected (Gnostic gospels anyone?), or just plain ignored.

Finally, my biggest complaint with Christians in general is that more often than not they themselves pick and choose which portions of the Bible are true. Just look at the anti-abortion types in the States who also want to cut back on Social Security or Medicare -- a position that is clearly not "pro-life", nor follows through with Jesus' adminitions to take care of the least fortunate. If you wish to use Jesus' teachings as the basis of your ethics, fine -- but either be consistent, or be prepared to be exposed as a hypocrite.

Giants, people living 200 years, zombies, magic, women-bashing, all the Gospels being written by people who never met Jesus, virgin birth, God being all powerful but unable to do things like forgive humanity without killing himself, God effectively killing himself but disagreeing with suicide, 6000 year old earth if you take it as literal, absolutely content-free rubbish if you do not, God supporting genocide, God killing babies, God telling a guy to burn his son alive but then saying "jk! you got punkd!", Jesus saying basically the same things most homeless guys say, Jesus calling himself God and saying that he is the holy humbleist of them all in the same sentence, the fact that the whole idea of Jesus was ripped off from other cultures like the Egyptians, 4 gospels that often contradict one another, Jesus tacitly supporting slavery by telling slaves to be good and obey their masters, God sending people to hell for their poor choices which he predestined them to make, God letting Satan use Job as a punching bag because of some weird bet, God being the perfect creator but having never created anything perfect, crazy laws like not being able to eat shrimp on pain of death, saying all men need to cut off part of their penis, God being jealous of imaginary gods, if the flood killed everyone except Noah and his family then Noah had to have thousands of children to reach known historical population levels fast enough, Noah built a boat by himself that could carry two of every land-dwelling species at once, the fact that if half these things happened in a fantasy novel you would think they were plot holes.
Also, you are the one making the claim; you have the burden of proof! Please, this is pretty much Thinking 101. "For all of you that do not believe in unicorns, why don't you just prove it to me?"

Einstein did not believe in god much less a deep belief. Where he's referred to the word God he's talking about the Universe

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish"

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

And in particular about the rumor that a Jesuit priest had debated with Einstein and converted him from Atheism (also wrong as Einstein greatly disliked being called Atheist as well).

I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.... It is always misleading to use anthropomorphical concepts in dealing with things outside the human sphere—childish analogies. We have to admire in humility and beautiful harmony of the structure of this world—as far as we can grasp it. And that is all.

And this is what he has to say about the word God itself

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text

And, to round it out

I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.

His beliefs had God not as willful force beyond the universe, but as the universe itself. He sees the laws of physics not as something that God has created, but something that God is, something beyond us that we can but hope to catch a glimpse of. Something without an anthropomorphic will or mind, something that does not care for us at all. (He viewed this as important as we therefore must care for each other instead of relying on God and ignoring each other) I think you will find that while many leading scientists may, as Einstein, reject organized religion, most of them will nevertheless regard the Universe with reverence, many (including Einstein) referring to such reverence in spiritual terms. Essentially, a small and petty God preoccupied with murdering those who use their free will wrong by eating the wrong kinds of food, wearing the wrong kinds of clothes, planting crops in the wrong way, was and is inconsistent with those scientists views of the absolute majesty of creation.

At any rate, Einstein was perhaps even more displeased at those who would call him an Athiest as part of their OWN Argument from Authority. What he had to say about (loud) atheism was

The fanatical atheists are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against traditional religion as the 'opium of the masses'—cannot hear the music of the spheres

He repeated such sentiment many times. Though he dislikes the Dogma of religion he does not wish to challenge believers lest he replace a (perhaps childish) belief with emptiness, saying "such a belief seems to me preferable to th